<p>People in China hear about schools in California from their cousins who have emigrated. 
More generally, students from countries all over the world go to all the United States colleges with strong programs, so of course the best colleges in the United States have not just national reputations, but international reputations. I’m told that my alma mater has more students from China than any other college in North America.</p>
<p>dstark,
I’m so glad that you finally found some rankings that you can be proud of (and all this time, I’ve been fooled in thinking that places like Dartmouth, Brown, and Notre Dame are great undergraduate colleges, not to mention Rice, U Virginia, U North Carolina, Wake Forest, W&M, etc.). </p>
<p>Good luck and enjoy your rankings. Maybe next time you can give us Borat’s list from the Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.</p>
<p>Yeah, Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Cambridge, MIT, CalTech, Columbia, Princeton, Chicago, Oxford…pretty poor schools. I feel bad for students who end up at any of those places.</p>
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<p>What I see is Harvard as the [a?] world standard University and has been that way for decades; do you think otherwise? Yes, I have previously also acknowledged that PA is driven in part by grad schools, and that’s ok with me.</p>
<p>I also see Yale, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and all others PA=4.5+, not far behind. As Tarhunt tried to point out, only on Lake Wobegone can you give them all 5’s on the opinion scale. If HYPSM = 5.0, Emory & Wake & (fill in your favorite school) just doesn’t get there for prestige, and that’s ok with me, too. [full disclosure: Wake is both of my kids’ short lists.]</p>
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<p>Well, I’ve lost a bit of the sense of this thread so I’m not sure if you’re just pointing out to Hawkette, by yanking his/her chain, that purely numeric systems for evaluating faculty often miss the point. But just in case you ARE really shocked, it’s all in the methodology, of course, which you linked. Any time you focus on publishing and high cites in a relatively small number of fields, and do little adjustment for faculty size, you’re likely to end up with the large faculty, hard science research institutions near the top.</p>
<p>Despite Hawk’s sniffs to the contrary, the Chinese rankings are used worldwide and given much weight. See recent COHE article on them.</p>
<p>"When a small group of researchers at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in China, started comparing the world’s top research universities, their aim was to help China develop world-class institutions of its own. But their annual “Academic Rankings of World Universities,” first published in 2003, quickly became a popular international reference.</p>
<p>The ranking is based almost entirely on measures of strength in research. It looks at such indicators as the number of faculty members whose papers are highly cited, and the number of faculty members and alumni who win Nobel Prizes. The result is a list of what Shanghai Jiao Tong says are the world’s 500 best institutions.</p>
<p>In 2004 The Times Higher Education Supplement, a British weekly, introduced its annual World University Rankings, which list 200 institutions. Those rankings are based half on the opinions of faculty members and company recruiters, and half on the ratio of full-time academic staff members to students and on how often faculty members’ papers are cited.</p>
<p>Although the ranking has not achieved the influence of its Chinese competitor, the two lists have had considerable impact in just a few years, especially outside the United States."</p>
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<p>No. Academics are not being asked Is there any faculty quality on this campus? when they rate a school for PA. I think it is flawed to interpret their responses as if they were.</p>
<p>I’ll try one more time, but this is looking increasingly like a gulf that is too large to cross. If you interpret my comments as challenging/attacking the top schools by pointing out that there are other great schools that deserve better treatment, then you will never understand, much less agree with, the major point that I have tried to raise here and elsewhere-there is great quality and great faculty around the country and that PA scores do not reflect this broad quality and overstate the differences among many, many schools. </p>
<p>I have said repeatedly that the top schools deserve their marks; I’m certainly not tearing down HYPSM et al and poster comments that suggest otherwise are knowingly false. IMO such comments seek more to obfuscate the discussion than truly consider how much better or worse off a student will learn from the faculty at a college. </p>
<p>Perhaps this difference comes down to what one values in the discussion: are you more interested in the institutional reputation of a college as defined by one group that values research as the determinant of a college’s reputation or are you interested in the classroom experience that a student will have and the level of his/her preparedness upon graduation to excel in the postgraduate world. Obviously, I am more concerned with the latter while still accepting that the former may be important for some. </p>
<p>I contend that the difference in quality of faculties and the quality of the undergraduate classroom experience vis-</p>
<p>To whom are you speaking in that last post?</p>
<p>
Another example relevant to CC … class rank and minute differences in GPAs and making some sort of a conclusion on those minute differences … I call it the “illusion of precision” … if I include 4 decimal places on the GPAs I can rank order them and know the true ranking of the students. The measurement system itself is not accurate enough to warrant using lots of decimal places and trying to differentiate on those decimal places is not analytically sound.</p>
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<p>hawkette: I nearly always agree with your primary point…there ARE many great colleges out there. But, I disagree with what appears to be your either/or scenario; you appear to conclude that high ranking is not conducive to a fine undergraduate experience.</p>
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<p>I would suggest that threads like this blue state-red state obfuscate your point since it makes it easy for data junkies to shoot holes in the data, and thus, the message.</p>
<p>Hawkette, since the PA numbers are different than you believe accurate, I come to the following conclusions</p>
<p>1) PA is made up of opinions based on different factors than you are using.</p>
<p>Or</p>
<p>2) PA is based on classroom teaching but the people making the opinions have come to different conclusions than you.</p>
<p>Or</p>
<p>3) Conspiracy.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is 3. As for 2., You can talk all you want about classroom experiences and how some schools are getting short changed in the PA because their classroom experiences are being underappreciated. You don’t know. It is hard to measure. It is difficult to compare. Even in the same school, the classroom experiences vary. You can get top classroom experiences in community colleges too. To go on and on about this when you don’t know the classroom experiences of the schools you are actually talking about makes no sense.</p>
<p>Plus, PA is measuring different factors than just the classroom experience. It’s obvious. The PA of schools are pretty similar in USNWR, China, and Great Britain. Think about it.</p>
<p>What you really want is for PA to just measure the classroom experience. You want opinions to match your own when it comes too classroom experience. You want a consensus of opinion to match yours. </p>
<p>It’s not going to happen with the way PA is measured now. PA measures intangibles. It looks at research. it looks at discovery of knowledge. It’s an opinion. Yours may not be accurate anyway for others anyway. My experiences and my kids experiences don’t jibe with the way you talk about the schools with strong grad programs. </p>
<p>I mentioned in another thread that gossip overrides what people actually see. I see something and somebody else says no, you didn’t see that, you saw this. Pretty soon, I’m no longer believing my own eyes. I’m believing somebody who wasn’t even there. :)</p>
<p>Nah. That doesn’t work for me. :)</p>
<p>You have mentioned before that you are trying to open up people to the idea that there are many great schools. Undiscovered great schools. You have mentioned that this is very important and what you are trying to get across to people.</p>
<p>I look with my own eyes and I don’t see you doing that. What I see you doing is taking the top 35 schools in USNWR and reranking the schools to your liking. I don’t see much value there. </p>
<p>Now, if you really talked about the other couple of hundred schools or more that students should consider, and why they should consider these schools, I see value in that.</p>
<p>bluebayou,
No, you’ve missed my meaning again. I posit that low PA rating and ranking is not reflective of the quality of the undergraduate experience vis-a-vis faculty. You keep coming at me like I am trying to pull the historical powers down. I’m not. I’m suggesting that more and more universities deserve higher ratings and the relative differences between the top-rated schools and those that follow are smaller now than they have ever been, but the PA scores do not reflect this. </p>
<p>Consider the following comparisons:</p>
<ol>
<li>Rice 2008: 4.0 Rice 1998: 4.2
Duke 2008: 4.4 Duke 1998: 4.6
U Penn 2008: 4.5 U Penn 1998: 4.5</li>
</ol>
<p>Have Rice and Duke really fallen that much nationally and compared to U Penn over the last decade? And at a time when their student quality and other quantitative measures were improving? </p>
<ol>
<li>Wake Forest 2008: 3.5 Wake Forest 1998: 3.4
U North Carolina 2008: 4.2 U North Carolina 1998: 4.2
UC Berkeley 2008: 4.8 UC Berkeley: 4.7</li>
</ol>
<p>Is the faculty at U North Carolina really that much superior to Wake, either then or now? How about UC Berkeley to Wake or U North Carolina? Will the student really find a lot fewer quality faculty members at Wake? Will an undergraduate student at either Wake or U North Carolina really have a seriously weaker faculty and learning experience than what they’d get at UC Berkeley? </p>
<ol>
<li>W&M 2008: 3.7 U Virginia 2008: 4.3
W&M 1998: 3.8 U Virginia 1998: 4.4</li>
</ol>
<p>Over the last decade, have these two colleges really lost ground on a national scale and is the quality of the undergraduate faculty at U Virginia that much superior to W&M, either then or now? </p>
<ol>
<li>Wash U 2008: 4.1 Wash U 1998: 4.1
Notre Dame: 3.9 Notre Dame: 3.9
U Michigan: 4.5 U Michigan: 4.5</li>
</ol>
<p>Is the quality of the undergraduate faculty really that much better at U Michigan than at Wash U and/or Notre Dame? Does the quality of the classroom experience count for anything in these comparisons? </p>
<p>I could go on and on, but I’m sure you get it. And so I ask-for students looking for a college, is he/she getting accurate guidance from USNWR’s PA scores about the quality of the faculty at any of these colleges, either nationally or in comparisons? My answer is no. I believe that the quality in the undergraduate learning experience vis-</p>
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<p>Well, how would you test that issue directly? What’s the validation you would point to for whatever your opinion is on the matter?</p>
<p>I am not putting words in your mouth. </p>
<p>I have read your complaints about PA more times than I can count and I can count pretty high. </p>
<p>How do you measure student quality in the classroom? </p>
<p>Would you rather take a class on politics taught by President Clinton or one of his aides?</p>
<p>"I really wish you would stop putting words in my mouth. I have been, am now, and will continue to be suggesting that, for the good of the student looking for a college, faculty assessments need to incorporate more than just the (mostly grad student-driven) research reputation of a college. I believe that it should incorporate BOTH academic assessments AND other considerations more specific to the student’s interest (classroom experience, quality of preparation for postgraduate life, reputation in the work world, etc).</p>
<p>I am sure that you can get what you want, a great classroom experience, quality of preparation for post graduate life, reputation in the work world, at any of the top 35 schools.</p>
<p>Who says you can’t?</p>
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<p>Amen, Amen, Amen!!!</p>
<p>The idea that Hawkette, or anyone else, has any earthly idea of the overall quality of instruction in even a single, large institution, given variance among departments and individual faculty members, is very, very suspect. This is why there isn’t a “quality of instruction” measurement in any of the ranking systems I’ve seen. There is a proxy in US News that’s a combination of class size and student academic skills. I tend to believe that, all other factors being equal, those two measurements probably have a fair relationship to the quality of classroom instruction, but I can’t prove it, and I’ve never seen a study on it.</p>
<p>Ideally, there would be nationwide standards for pre-testing and learning outcomes for every conceivable class, and post-testing for knowledge and skill development. That would give us some idea of the quality of instruction if adjusted for student academic skills. But no such thing exists. I fear that even a reasonable facsimile will never exist. Without that sort of testing, the idea that one can compare quality of instruction in classrooms empirically, and then rate them on a 40-point scale, is an idea doomed for the trashheap.</p>
<p>Hawkette, if you want to make a personal guess about the quality of instruction between various institutions, and then go about defending your numbers, then help yourself. But don’t expect many people with much background in metrics to take it seriously.</p>
<p>“Is the faculty at U North Carolina really that much superior to Wake, either then or now? How about UC Berkeley to Wake or U North Carolina? Will the student really find a lot fewer quality faculty members at Wake?”</p>
<p>“Will the student really find a lot fewer quality faculty members at Wake?”</p>
<p>Fewer? Yes.</p>
<p>“The idea that Hawkette, or anyone else, has any earthly idea of the overall quality of instruction in even a single, large institution, given variance among departments and individual faculty members, is very, very suspect”</p>
<p>That’s what I was trying to say. :)</p>
<p>“The idea that Hawkette, or anyone else, has any earthly idea of the overall quality of faculty in even a single, large institution, given variance among departments and individual faculty members, is very, very suspect”</p>
<p>That’s what I have been trying to say. :)</p>
<p>Yet somehow you want to accept PA scores…Funny…Very funny. :)</p>